Like most Kansans, Carrie Schmidt enthusiastically supported President Donald Trump in past elections.
“I voted for him,” she told Scripps News in an interview Wednesday. “I was very, like, loud.”
But her views on the president have soured in recent months — and she says there’s one main issue that explains why.
“I don't trust President Trump to make the best decisions right now, especially when he's saying that he supports these data centers,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt is one of a growing number of Americans opposed to the proliferation of data center developments, used to power the internet and, increasingly, artificial intelligence technologies. Though the construction projects bring the promise of new jobs and added tax revenue for communities, many residents are growing firmer in their opposition, citing concerns about increased utility costs, health impacts and a broader cultural clash with rural values.
Schmidt didn’t initially intend to become an anti-data center activist, she says.
In April, she saw a Facebook post about a data center project planned in her town of Gardner, and began to research more about the developments. That project was ultimately scrapped amid opposition from local residents. But it put Schmidt — a chiropractic assistant with no prior experience in political organizing — on a path towards activism, one which landed her on the receiving end of a lawsuit.
Shortly after the Gardner project was killed, Schmidt learned of a separate data center development planned in nearby Edgerton, a small town of fewer than 2,000 people, roughly 45 minutes southwest of Kansas City. She and Edgerton resident Kim Twente got connected on an anti-data center Facebook page and joined forces to organize against the project, gathering signatures for a petition to force city leaders to either scrap the development or put it up for a public vote.
But city officials instead pursued a third option: suing Schmidt and Twente, asking a judge to declare their petition “void and invalid,” arguing it went beyond their legal authorities. DAMAC Digital, the UAE-based company seeking to develop the project, soon intervened, working with the city to block the petition from reaching voters.
“Because state law is not clear on whether this specific proposal counts as administrative, the City is proactively asking a District Court judge to step in and decide if the proposed ordinance is valid,” Edgerton leaders wrote in an unsigned July statement.
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To Schmidt and Twente, the lawsuit carried a more sinister message.
“We definitely felt like this was a bullying tactic, something that was an effort to try to get us to be quiet, to stop doing what we were doing,” Twente told Scripps News.
In September, Judge Stephanie Goodenow of the Johnson County District Court dismissed the city’s lawsuit against the two women, finding it violated their rights to free speech and assembly. But she’s still yet to rule on whether their petition can go before Edgerton voters.
Assuming Goodenow rules in their favor, Schmidt and Twente are confident their neighbors will vote to block the project.
“When 71% of the American people don't want this, it's time to pause and listen to the people and really figure out what's going on,” Twente said. ‘Right now, it really feels like this is a push for corporations and not a push for the American people.”
Behind the backlash: health, environment and changing culture
Schmidt and Twente’s opposition to the Edgerton data center mostly centers on health grounds.
Developers planned to use a closed-loop cooling system, which requires less water to operate but utilizes added chemicals, they noted.
“If any of those chemicals go out onto that land, into that waterway, they are forever chemicals,” Twente, a neurology nurse practitioner, said. “They do not break down on the land. They do not break down in the human body. And if they get into that water system, they're going to get into 56,000 people's water.”
Schmidt is also worried about the noise from the center once it’s running and potential impacts on her children.
“It's not just the sound you can hear, but it's the sound you can feel, and so that's really concerning,” Schmidt said. “You know, what is this doing to our kids' psyche?”
Representatives for DAMAC did not respond to Scripps News’ inquiries about the development, potential health implications or the ongoing legal challenge.
But others in Kansas have different reasons for opposing data center developments.
Nancy Thellman lives on a farm in unincorporated Douglas County, just outside Lawrence. She, too, has become active in anti-data center conversations in recent months — focusing on potential impacts on the land and environment.
“We have all the natural resources: we have the flat land, we have the water, we have everything that a data center could want,” Thellman told Scripps News. “My sense of urgency about stepping in is from years of advocacy trying to save prime farm ground, farm land — prime soil, which is where we grow our food which we all need.”
Even as there aren’t yet any planned data center projects in her area, Thellman isn’t waiting around for one to pop up. With the Kansas City suburbs and exurbs among the fastest-growing data center hubs in the nation, she says the time to act to block such developments is now.
“In our community, in learning from other communities and around the nation, we decided we better start organizing our opposition before there was development on file,” Thellman said. “We’re trying to get ahead of it.”
Fifteen miles northeast in Tonganoxie, Jim and Dee Karleskint are actively working to block a project in development that would convert 1,100 acres of prime farmland to concrete and warehouses.
“It's just beautiful, isn't it?” Jim remarked as he maneuvered his black Cadillac SUV around Hemp Hill Road, along the southern edge of a lush plot of land — land where purchase rights were recently acquired by a subsidiary of data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure.
“It's sad they want to destroy it,” Jim added. “And destroy it they will.”
In a statement to Scripps News, Cloverleaf’s chief development officer Aaron Bilyeu touted the project’s potential economic benefits for the surrounding communities — noting the development is “going through the county’s review process” and “subject to approval by the Board of County Commissioners.”
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“Cloverleaf’s approach to developing critical infrastructure is grounded in delivering real benefits to the communities we serve,” Bilyeu’s statement read. “The data center campus will meet all applicable state and federal regulations and will be subject to the county’s standards for noise and setback regulations. Cloverleaf has designed the project with closed-loop cooling, and will pay for any power or transmission upgrades so local ratepayers don’t bear those costs.”
The Karleskints aren’t convinced.
“It could improve things somewhat, but what Cloverleaf is putting out and what the county is saying, it doesn’t work with the way they're saying it's going to happen,” Jim argued.
Dee noted the economic benefits projected by Cloverleaf are over a 30-year period, while the state’s data center tax abatements only last 20 years.
“Anyone who's done a business course 101 knows if there's no incentive, they're going to move on, so in 20 years that'll stop,” she said.
Moreover, it’s likely to take around 10 years to build the new complex, Dee added, delaying any potential benefits to the community.
“Maybe for 10 years we'll get what they're promising, but half of what they say that we're going to receive is going to go for infrastructure upkeep, so that really dwindles that pie down to nothing,” Dee said.
In its statement, Cloverleaf also noted the proposed plan “sets aside 330 acres for permanent land conservation.” But the Karleskints argued even that provision has malicious roots — intended to circumvent policies enabling residents to challenge the development by shielding the construction in environmental easements.
“They are so unethical, it's disgusting,” Jim remarked.
The Karleskints speak with a rural Kansas twang. Dee wore a knit black sweater with a horse motif; her husband, a white polo and black blazer jacket. Now in his late-70s, one might not expect Jim to know how to operate an iPhone – let alone be up-to-date on the technical jargon around hyperscaler data centers and gigawatt transmission.
“The community, the residents around here — they don't want this area destroyed, made into an industrial site of a, you know, mega data center, a 1.2 gigawatt with that many buildings,” Jim said. “There's concern about what it will do to our culture and our environment.”
The Karleskints knew the previous owner of the land, cattle rancher Paul McKee, and insisted he’d have opposed the development if still alive.
“He's buried here,” Jim said, gesturing towards the center of an overgrown prairie. “His remains will have to be dug up and put someplace else, I assume.”
All politics are local
Trump won Kansas by significant margins over the past three presidential elections, including by more than 16 points in 2024. Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature, three out of four U.S. House seats and both U.S. Senate seats. A Democrat has not been elected to the U.S. Senate in Kansas in 94 years.
But like other red states, polls show trouble for the Kansas GOP in the upcoming midterm elections. Democratic minister Adam Hamilton has a four-point lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, a CNN poll released Thursday found, and a Sunday YouGov poll showed Republican gubernatorial hopeful Ty Masterson just one point ahead of Democrat Cindy Holscher.
High prices and frustration with the Iran war are certainly part of the explanation for the unusually competitive races, though some Kansans tell Scripps News the data center debate is a major factor too.
“I think Hamilton's going to win in Kansas. I really do,” said Jim Karleskint, who previously served in the Kansas statehouse as a Republican.
In his meetings with local residents organizing against such developments, “we don't talk about politics,” Jim said. “We just talk about this, and there is a consensus across the board that we're opposed to it, and it's not political.”
Back in Edgerton, Schmidt has encountered similar unanimity.
“Somebody said something to me: They were like, ‘Carrie, I don't agree with you on some things, we agree on this,’” she recalled. “I don't care who you voted for; if you're on ‘Team No Data Center’ then we're on the same team.”
Twente highlighted Trump’s strong endorsement of data center developments — the president has continued to enthusiastically back the projects, even in the wake of Americans’ growing opposition — as factoring into her concerns about corruption in the White House.
“[DAMAC] paid President Trump $12.5 million to bring data centers into this country, and I think that angered a lot of people,” she noted. “That seems like a conflict of interest between our government and what the people want.”
Asked about Kansans’ opposition to data centers, and Trump’s support for their development more broadly, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Scripps News in a statement that Trump’s “bold leadership is turning data centers into engines of growth and opportunity for communities across the country,” arguing his policies eliminated red tape and boosted foreign investments that benefit Americans.
A White House official who asked not to be identified went on to argue that “SI” (the White House’s preferred term for AI) “dominance is essential for our national security, economic prosperity, and improved quality for the American people,” and shared examples of positive economic benefits to communities that welcomed data center projects — though, notably, none in Kansas.
The White House did not respond to questions about DAMAC’s financial relationship with the president, nor did the Dubai-based company.
Back in Kansas, meanwhile, Trump’s support could spell peril for the president’s party
“This wave of data center stuff has overtaken— I mean, it is at the top of many people's lists now too,” Thellman told Scripps News. “People are desperately ready for a change, and I think that Kansas is going to surprise the world.”
